"About you. You were very good to come with me. Several people thought you were my daughter."

"I seem to have been on the phone most of the time." Eve was apologetic.

"Thank God it turned out all right."

"We don't know that yet. They're a weird bunch. They could send her back there. I hate being beholden to them, I really do."

"You don't have to be," said Kit. "The first thing I'm going to do when I get the insurance money is to give you a sum. You can walk back up that avenue, and throw it back. Throw it on the floor."

Patsy said that with all their talk about teaching them to work in a house, the orphanage had been very bad at teaching them to sew.

Mossy had said that his mother was expecting Patsy to have made a lot of things for her hope chest, like pillowcases, and hemmed them herself.

She was struggling away in the kitchen. The trouble was that often she pricked her fingers and the nice piece of linen got stained with blood.

"He's mad. Can't you buy grand pillowcases for half nothing up in Mcbirney's in Dublin?" Benny said indignantly.

But this wasn't the point. Apparently Mrs. Rooney expected a suitable bride for Mossy to be able to turn a hem properly and sew dainty stitches. Patsy had to try harder and put up with all this nonsense because she had nothing else to bring to the marriage. No family, no bit of land, not even her father's name.

"Does it have to be hand done? Couldn't it be on a machine?"

Benny was worse than useless, her own stitching was in big loops, irregular and impatient.

"What's the difference? We haven't a machine that works."

"We'll ask Paccy to mend it. Let's look on it as a challenge," Benny said.

Paccy Moore said that a horse with heavy hooves must have been using the sewing machine, and that if you had a fleet of highly paid engineers they wouldn't be able to put it back in working order. Tell the lady of the house to throw it out, was his advice. And surely they must have had an old one years ago, one of those nice firm ones that people like Benny and Patsy couldn't break.

They went sadly back to Lisbeg. There wasn't much point in telling the lady of the house anything. The listless manner hadn't changed. They did have an old sewing machine somewhere with a treadle underneath.

Benny remembered seeing it once, even playing at it. But it was useless to talk to Mother. She would try to remember and then say that her headache was coming back.

But Benny hated to see Patsy, who had started life with so little, continue in this struggle to please.

"You see, I can't have bought ones, Benny. The old rip gives me the material herself, just to make sure."

"I'll ask Clodagh to do them for you. She loves a challenge too," said Benny.

Clodagh said they should both be shot for not knowing how to do a simple seam. She showed them on the machine.

"Go on, do it yourselves," she urged.

"There isn't time for that. You do it and we'll do something in return for you. Tell us what you want us to do."

"Ask my aunt to lunch and keep her there all afternoon. I want to rearrange everything in the shop: if I knew someone was looking after Peg I could get a gang in to help me. When she comes back it'll be too late to change it."

"When?"

"Thursday, early closing day."

"And you'll do all these pillowcases and some sheets and two bolster cases?"

"It's a deal."

Jack Foley said he was going to skip lectures on Thursday and they'd go to the pictures. "Not Thursday. Any other day."

"Bloody hell. Isn't that the day you don't have lectures?"

"Yes, but I have to go back to Knockglen. There's this great scheme.

"Oh, there's always some great scheme in Knockglen," he said.

"Friday. I can stay the night in Dublin."

"All right."

Benny knew she would have to do something to try and smooth down Jack's ruffled feelings. She was very much afraid it might involve doing something more adventurous in the car than they had done already.

As Patsy said, at least three times a day, men were the divil.

Nan had taken a risk in hanging up on Simon. She had also left the phone slightly off the hook in case he called again. She went angrily up to her room and lay on her bed. The freshly ironed dress hung on its hanger, her pink nails twinkled at her, she really should go out somewhere and get value from all this primping and preening.

But Nan Mahon didn't want to arrange a meeting with Bill Dunne, or Johnny O" Brien, or anyone. Not even the handsome Jack Foley, who had been prowling discontentedly since Benny was never around.

Benny. Simon must have got her telephone number from Benny. He had probably pleaded with her and said it was urgent. Benny was very foolish, Nan thought. A handsome man like Jack Foley should not be left on his own in Dublin. All very well to say that the Rosemary Ryans and Sheilas knew he was spoken for. But when it came to it people often forgot loyalties. In Dublin things were more immediate than that.

"You're very cross," Heather said.

"Of course I am. Why couldn't you have told us how awful it was?"

Heather had, many times, but nobody had listened. Her grandfather had looked away dreamily, and Simon had said everyone hated school. You just had to grin and bear it. Mrs. Walsh had said that in her position Heather had to have a suitable education, meeting the people she would be meeting socially later on, not the daughters of every poor fellow down on his luck which is what you'd meet in a village school.

She hadn't expected Simon to be so annoyed. He had been on the phone to someone and had come back in a great temper.

"She hung up on me," he had said, several times. At first Heather had been pleased to see him distracted, but she realized that it wasn't making their conversation about her future any easier.

"Mother Francis will talk to you about the school," she began.

"That's all that bloody woman wants. First they got Eve, and now they want you."

"That's not true. They took Eve because nobody else wanted her."

"Oh, they have you well indoctrinated, I can see that."

"But who did want her, Simon? Tell me."

"That's not the point. The point is that we have planned an expensive education for you."

"It'll be much cheaper here, much. I asked. It's hardly anything."

"No. You don't understand. It's not possible."

"You don't understand," Heather said, twelve years of age and confronting him with her fists clenched. As she told him that she would run away every single time she was sent back to that school, her eyes flashed and she reminded him suddenly of the way Eve had looked that day she came to Westlands.

Jack seemed to have got over his bad temper. On Thursday morning he took Benny to coffee in the Annexe. She ate a corner of one of his fly cemeteries in order to prevent him from over-dosing on them, and being pronounced unfit to play in the next match.

He put his hand over hers.

"I am a bad-tempered boorish bear, or bearish boor, which ever you like," he apologized.

"It won't be long now. I'll have everything sorted out, I swear," Benny said.

"Days, weeks, months, decades?" he asked, but he was smiling at her.

He was the old Jack.

"Weeks. A very few weeks."

"And then you'll be able to romp shamelessly around Dublin with me, giving in to my every base wish and physical lust."

"Something like that," she laughed.

"I'll believe it when I see it," he said, looking straight at her.

"You do know how much I want you, don't you?"

She swallowed, not able to find the right words. As it happened, she didn't need to. Nan had approached.

"Is this a Sean-Carmel impersonation, or can I join you for coffee?"

Benny was relieved. Jack went back to the counter to collect it. "I'm not interrupting anything am I, seriously?" Nan was marvellous. You could actually ask her to take her coffee off and join another group.

Nan wouldn't mind. She was a great apostle of the solidarity between girls. But in fact it was much better not to walk any further down the path of discussing sex.

"I wanted Benny to come to Swamp Women but she's stood me up," Jack said, in a mock mournful voice.

"Why d'ya not go to Swamp Women with the nice gentlman', honey?"

Nan asked. "I sho would in yore place."

"Then come with me," Jack suggested. Nan looked at Benny, who nodded eagerly.

"Oh, please do, Nan. He's been talking about Swamp Women for days."

"I'll go and keep him from harm," Nan promised.

On their way to the cinema they met Simon Westward.

"Have you been avoiding me?" he asked curtly. Nan smiled. She introduced the two men. Anyone passing by would have thought they made an extraordinarily handsome tableau standing there, two of them in college scarves, the third small, and very county.

"We're going to Swamp Women. It's about escaped women prisoners and alligators."

"Would you like to join us?" Jack suggested. Simon looked up at Jack, a long glance. "No, thanks all the same."

"Why did you ask him to come with us? Because you knew he wouldn't?" Nan asked.

"Nope. Because I could see how much he fancied you."

"Only mildly, I think."

"No, seriously, I think," Jack said.

Because Nan knew that Simon would have turned to look after them, she took Jack's arm companionably.

Benny went back to Knockglen on the bus in high good humour. Jack was cheerful again. He did say he wanted her, he couldn't have been more explicit. And now she didn't even have to worry about him being left high and dry. Nan had gone to the silly film with him.

All Benny had to do now was keep Peggy Pine entertained while unmentionable things went on in her shop. She knew that Fonsie, Dekko Moore, Teddy Flood and Rita were all poised. Peggy must be kept off the scene until at least five o'clock.

When she got into Lisbeg Benny was pleased to see that Patsy had made a good soup, and there were plain scones to be served with it. Mr. Flood had sent down a small leg of lamb, there was the smell of mint sauce made in a nice china sauce boat.

Mother wore a pale grey twinset with her black skirt, and even a small brooch at the neck. She looked more cheerful. Probably she needed company, Benny realized. She certainly seemed a lot less listless than on other days.

Peggy drank three thimblefuls of sherry enthusiastically, and so did Mother. Benny had never known Clodagh's aunt in better form.

She told Mother that business was the best way to live your life, and that if she had her time, and her chances, all over again she would still think so.

She confided to them, something that they already knew, which was that she had been Disappointed earlier in life. But that she bore the gentleman in question no ill will. He had done her a service in fact.

The lady he had chosen did not have the look of a contented person.

Peggy Pine had seen her from time to time over the years. While she in her little shop was as happy as anything.

Mother listened interested, and Benny began to have the stirrings of hope that Peggy might be able to achieve for Mother what she had not been able to do. Peggy might make Annabel Hogan rediscover some kind of reason for living.

"The young people are the hope, you know," Peggy said. Benny prayed that the transformation taking place in the shop at this moment would not be of such massive proportions as to make Peggy withdraw this view.

"Ah, yes, we've been blessed with Sean Walsh," Annabel said.

"Well, yes, as long as you'll be in there to keep the upper hand," Peggy warned.

"I couldn't be going in interfering. He did fine in poor Eddie's time."

"Eddie was there to be a balance to him."

"Not much of a balance I'd be," Annabel Hogan said. "I don't know the first thing about it."

"You'll learn.

Benny saw the dangerous trembling of her mother's lip. She hastened to come in and explain to Peggy, that things were a little bit up in the air at the moment. There had been a question of Sean being made a partner and that should be cleared up before Mother went into the shop;

"Much wiser to go in before the deed is signed," Peggy said. To her surprise Benny saw her mother nodding in agreement. Yes, it did make sense to go in and be shown the ropes. It wouldn't look as if she were only going in afterwards to make sure they got an equal share.

And after all they might need more hands around the shop, so Sean if he was going to be a partner would prefer an unpaid one than someone who would need a wage. She told an astonished Benny and Patsy that she might go in on Monday for a few hours to see how the daily routine worked.

Peggy looked pleased, but not very surprised. Benny guessed that she might have planned the whole thing. She was a very clever woman.

Nan and Jack came out of the cinema.

"It was terrible," Nan said. "But great terrible," Jack pleaded.

"Lucky Benny. She's back in Knockglen."

"I wish she didn't spend so much time there." They had a cup of coffee in the cinema cafe" and he told her how hard it was to have a girlfriend miles away. What would Nan do if she had a chap down in Knockglen, at the far end of civilization?

"Well, I do," Nan said.

"Of course, the guy in the cavalry twill and the plummy accent."

But Jack had lost interest. He wanted to talk about Benny and how on earth they could persuade her mother to let her live in Dublin.

He wondered was there any hope that she could have a room in Nan's house? Nan said there was none at all.

They said goodbye at the bus stop outside the cinema. Jack ran for a bus going south.

Simon stepped out of a doorway.

"I wondered if you were free for dinner?" he said to Nan. "Did you wait for me?" She was pleased.

"I knew you wouldn't see Swamp Women round a second time. What about that nice little hotel we went to in Wicklow? We might stay the night."

"How lovely," Nan said, in a voice that was like a cat purring.

It was a marvellous night in Knockglen. Peggy Pine absolutely loved the changes in the shop. The new lighting, the fitting rooms, and the low music in the background.

Annabel Hogan had called on Sean Walsh and said that she hoped to come and join him in the shop on Monday and that he would be patient with her and explain things simply. She mistook his protestations as expressions of courtesy and insisted that she turn up at nine a. m. on the first day of the week.

Mossy Rooney said that his mother thought that Patsy was a fine person and would be very happy for them to go to Father Ross and fix a day.

And best of all Nan Mahon telephoned Benny and said that Swamp Women was the worst film she had ever seen, but that Jack Foley obviously adored Benny and wanted nothing but to talk about her.

Tears of gratitude sprang to Benny's eyes.

"You're so good, Nan. Thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart."

"What else are friends for?" asked Nan as she packed her little overnight bag and prepared to meet Simon for their visit to Wicklow.

Sean Walsh was in Healy's Hotel.

"What am I going to do?"

"Let her come in. She'll tire of it in a week."

"And if she doesn't?"

"You'll have someone to help you do the errands. It makes it harder for her to refuse you the partnership. She can't be avoiding your eye and the issue if she's working beside you."

"You're very intelligent. . . um. . . Dorothy," he said.

Rosemary Ryan knew what was going on everywhere. Eve said she was like those people during the war who had a map of where their troops were and their submarines and they kept moving them about like pieces on a board.

Rosemary knew Jack had been to the pictures with Nan. She was checking that Benny knew.

"Aren't you the silly-billy to go off and leave your young man wandering around unescorted," Rosemary said.

"He wasn't unescorted for long. I sent him to the pictures with Nan."

"Oh, you did. That's all right." Rosemary seemed genuinely relieved.

"Yes, I had to go back to Knockglen and he had declared an afternoon off for himself."

"You spend too long down there." Rosemary was trying to warn her about something.

"Yes, well, I'm staying in town tonight. We're all going to Palmerston. Are you coming?"

"I might. I have ferocious designs on a medical student. I'll send out a few enquiries to know whether he'll be there or not."

What could Rosemary be warning her about? Not Nan, that was clear.

Everyone knew that Nan was besotted with Simon Westward.

Sheila had given up on him. There was nobody else. Perhaps it was just that he was getting used to being on his own at social occasions.

Perhaps by staying so long in Knockglen Benny was letting Jack think that he was free to ramble, and there might have been a bit of rambling, possibly the Welsh type of rambling.

. . that she didn't know about. Benny dragged her mind back to Tudor Policy in Ireland. The lecturer said that it was often complicated and hard to pin down since it seemed to change according to the mood of the time. What else is new, Benny wondered? Jack, who had been so loving about her when talking to Nan, was annoyed again now.

He had thought she was going to stay in town for the weekend apparently and had made plans for Saturday and Sunday too. But Benny had to go back to prepare her mother for work on Monday. If he couldn't understand that what kind of friend was he? Eve would say he wasn't meant to be a friend. He was meant to be a big handsome hunk who happened to fancy Benny. But there had to be more to it than that.

Eve and Kit discussed plans.

They would put a hand basin in each bedroom, and build an extra lavatory and shower. That would stop the congestion on the landings in the morning.

They would have a woman to come in and wash on Mondays. They would have the house rewired, some of those electrical installations didn't bear thinking about.

They would be able to charge a little more if the facilities were that much better. But the real benefit would be they needn't keep students they didn't like. The boy who never opened his bedroom window, who had Guinness bottles under the bed and who had left three cigarette burns on the furniture would be given notice to mend his ways or leave. Nice fellows like Kevin Hickey could stay for ever.

For the first time in her life Kit Hegarty would have some freedom.

"Where does that leave me?" Eve asked lightly. "You won't need me now."

But she knew Kit did need her. So she spoke from a position of safety.

They had decided after reflection that the money would not be cast back on the drawing room floor of Westlands. It would be put for Eve in a post office account. Ready to be taken out and thrown, the moment Eve wanted to.

They danced at the rugby club and Benny realized there were people who came here every Friday night and that all of them knew Jack.

"I love you," he said suddenly as they sat sipping club oranges from bottles with straws. He pushed a damp piece of hair out of her eyes.

"Why?" she asked.

"Lord, I don't know. It would be much easier to love someone who didn't keep disappearing."

"I love you too," she said. "You delight me."

"That's a lovely thing to say."

"It's true. I love everything about you. I often think about you and I get a great warm feeling all over me."

"Talking about great feelings all over us, I have my father's car."

Her heart sank. Once in the car it was going to be very, very hard to say no. Everything they had been told at school, and at the mission, and in all those sermons on purity, made it seem like a simple choice.

Between sin and virtue. You were told that virtue was rewarded, that sin was punished, not only hereafter, but in this life. That boys had no respect for the girls who gave in to their demands.

But nobody had ever told anybody about how nice it felt, and how easy it would be to go on, and how cheap you felt stopping.

And about how you feared greatly that if you didn't go ahead with what you both wanted to do then there would be plenty more who would.

People of the temperament and lack of scruples up to now only discovered in Wales.

"I hope we didn't drag you away from each other too early." Eve spoke dryly as they settled down to sleep in Kit Hegarty's.

"No, just in time, I think," Benny said.

It had been the opportune demands of Aidan and Eve to let them into the car before they froze to death out of discretion.

"Why can't you stay the weekend?" Eve too seemed to be warning her about something. It was like a message that she was getting from everyone. She should stay around.

But there was no way that she could stay, no matter how great the danger. Things were at a crossroads in Knockglen.

"Have you a cigarette?" she asked Eve. "But you don't smoke."

"No, but you do. And I want you to listen while I tell you about Sean Walsh."

They turned on the light again, and Eve sat horrified as the tale of the money and the suspicions and the partnership was unfolded.

The hopes that Benny's mother might find a life of her own in the shop, the support that would be needed. Eve listened and understood. She said that it didn't matter how much temptation was thrown into Jack Foley's path, some things were more important than others, and Benny had to nail Sean Walsh, no matter what.

Eve said she'd come down herself and help to search for the money.

"But we can't go into his rooms. And if we were to get the guards he'd hide it."

"And he's such a fox," Eve added. "You'll have to be very, very careful."

There was now a Saturday lunch-time trade at Mario's, toasted cheese slices and a fudge cake with cream. The place was almost full as Benny walked past.

She went in to admire Clodagh's drastic changes. There were half a dozen people examining the rails and maybe four more in the fitting rooms.

Between them Clodagh and Fonsie had brought all the business in the town to their doorstep. There were even people who might well have gone to Dublin on a shopping trip browsing happily.

"Your mother's in great form altogether. She's talking of shortening her skirts, and smartening herself up."

"Mother of God, who'll shorten her skirts for her? You're too busy."

"You must be able to take up a simple hem. Didn't you say you had a sewing machine somewhere?"

"Yes, but I don't know where it is in the lumber and rubble up in the shop."

"Up in the Honourable Sean Walsh's territory?"

"No, he's right upstairs. The first floor."

"Ah, get it out, Benny. Get someone to drag it down to your house.

I'll come round for ten minutes and start you off."

"It mightn't be working," Benny said hopefully. "Then your mother'll have to look streelish, won't she?"

Benny decided she'd go back to the shop and see if the machine really was there and looked in workable condition before she asked Teddy Flood or Dekko Moore or someone with a handcart to help her home with it.

Sean wasn't in sight in the shop. Only old Mike saw her go upstairs.

She saw the sewing machine behind an old sofa with the springs falling out. It couldn't have been used for nearly twenty years.

It looked like a little table. The machine part was down in it.

Benny pulled, and up it came, shiny and new looking as well it might be, considering how little use it had had. It was quite well made, she thought, with those little drawers on each side, probably for spools of thread and buttons and all the things that sewing people filled their lives with.

She opened one of the little drawers. It was stuffed with small brown envelopes, pushed up one against the other. It seemed an extraordinary way to keep buttons and thread. She opened one idly and saw the green pound notes, and the pink ten-shilling notes squeezed together. There were dozens and dozens of envelopes, old ones addressed to the shop, originally with invoices, each with its post mark. With a feeling of ice water going right through her body, Benny realized that she had found the money Sean Walsh had been stealing from her father for years.

She didn't remember walking home. She must have passed Carroll's and Dessie Burn's and the cinema as well as Pine's and Paccy's and Mario's.

Maybe she even saluted people. She didn't know.

In the kitchen Patsy was grumbling.

"Your mother thought you must have missed the bus," she said.

Benny saw her preparing to put the meal on the table.

"Could you wait a few minutes, Patsy? I want to talk to Mother about something."

"Can't you talk and eat?"

"No."

Patsy shrugged. "She's above in the bedroom trying on clothes that stink of mothballs. She'll run them out of the shop with the smell of camphor." Benny grabbed the sherry bottle and two glasses and went upstairs. Patsy looked up in alarm.

In all her years in this house she had never been excluded from a conversation with the mistress and Benny. And never would she have believed that there was any subject that needed a drink being brought to the bedroom.

She said three quick Hail Marys that Benny wasn't pregnant. It was just the kind of thing that would happen to a nice big soft girl like Benny. Fall for a baby from a fellow who wouldn't marry her.

Annabel listened white-faced.

"It would have killed your father."

Benny sat on the side of the bed. She chewed her lip as she did when she was worried. Nan had said she must try to get out of the habit.

It would make her mouth crooked eventually. She thought about Nan for a quick few seconds. Nan wouldn't pause to care about her father's business. Not if it was being robbed blind by everyone in it. It was both terrible and wonderful to be so free.

"I wonder if Father knew," Benny said.

It was quite possible that he had his suspicions, but that being Eddie Hogan he had put them away. He wouldn't have opened his mouth unless he had positive proof. But it was odd that he had delayed the partnership deal. Mr. Green had said he was surprised that it had not been signed. Could Father have had second thoughts about going into partnership with a man who had his hand in the till over the years?

"Your father would not have been able to bear the disgrace of it all.

The guards coming in, a prosecution, the talk."

"I know," Benny agreed. "He'd never have stood for that." They talked as equals sitting in the bedroom that was strewn with the clothes Annabel had been trying on to wear on her first day in the shop. Benny didn't urge her to make decisions and Annabel didn't hang back.

Because they were equals they gave each other strength. "We could tell him we know," Annabel said. "He'd deny it."

They couldn't call the guards, they knew that. There was no way that they could ask Mr. Green to come in, climb the stairs to the first floor and inspect the contents of the sewing machine. Mr. Green wasn't the kind of lawyer you saw in movies who did this sort of thing. He was the most quiet and respectable of country solicitors.

"We could ask someone else to witness it. To come and see it."

"What good would that do?" Annabel asked.

"I don't know," Benny admitted. "But it would prove it was there in case Sean were to shift it and hide it somewhere else. You know, when we speak to him."

"When we speak to him? "We have to, Mother. When you go in there on Monday morning, he has to be gone." Annabel looked at her for a long time. She said nothing. But Benny felt there was some courage there, a new spirit. She believed that her mother would face what lay ahead.

Benny must find the right words to encourage her.

"If Father can see us, it's what he'd want. He'd want no scandal, no prosecution. But he wouldn't want you to stand beside Sean Walsh as a partner knowing what we know now."

-We'll ask Dr. Johnson to witness the find," Annabel Hogan said with a voice steadier than Benny would ever have believed.

Patsy said to Bee Moore that evening that you'd want to have the patience of a saint to work in Lisbeg these days. There was that much coming and going, and doors closed, and secrets, and bottles of sherry and no food being eaten and then food being called for at cracked times.

If this is what it was going to be like when the Mistress went up into the shop then maybe it was just as well she was going to marry Mossy Rooney and his battle-axe of a mother and be out of it.

Patsy remembered Bee's former interest in Mossy and altered her remarks slightly. She said she knew she was very lucky to have been chosen by Mossy and was honoured to be a part of his family.

Bee Moore sniffed, wondering again how she had lost him to Patsy.

She said that things were equally confusing in her house.

Everyone in Westlands seemed to have gone mad. Heather had started in St. Mary's and was bringing what Mrs. Walsh called every ragtag and bobtail of Knockglen back up to the house to ride her pony. The old man had taken to his bed, and Mr. Simon was not to be seen, though it was reliably reported that he had been in Knockglen at least two nights without coming home. Where on earth could he have stayed in Knockglen if he hadn't come home to his own bed in Westlands? It was a mystery.

Maurice Johnson said that he was a man whom nothing would surprise.

But the visit of Annabel Hogan and her daughter, and its reason, caught him on the hop.

He listened to their request. "Why me?" he asked.

"It's you or Father Ross. We don't want to bring the Church into it.

It's involving sin and punishment. All we need is someone reliable."

"Let's not delay," he said. "Let's go this minute."

There were two customers in the shop when they went in. Sean looked up from the boxes of V-necked jumpers that he had opened on the counter.

There was something about the deputation that alarmed him. His eyes followed them as they went to the back of the shop towards the stairs.

"Is there anything. . . ?" he began.

Benny paused on the stairs and looked at him. She had disliked him ever since she had first met him, and yet at this moment she felt a surge of pity for him. She took in his thin greasy hair and his long white narrow face.

He had not enjoyed his life or enriched it with the money he had taken.

But she must not falter now.

"We're just going to the first floor," she said. "Mother and I want Dr. Johnson to see something."

She saw the fear in his eyes.

"To witness something," she added, so that he would know.

Dr. Johnson went down the stairs quietly. He walked through the shop, his eyes firmly on the floor. He didn't return Mike's greeting. Nor did he acknowledge the figure of Sean standing there immobile with a box in his hands. He had said to the Hogans that he would confirm that in his presence they had removed upwards of two hundred envelopes each containing sums of money varying from five to ten pounds.

There had been no gloating in the downfall of a man he had never liked.

He looked at the little hoard in tightly screwed-up envelopes. The man was buying himself some kind of life, he supposed. Had he thought of wine, or women, or song when he had stashed Eddie Hogan's money away? It was impossible to know. He didn't envy the two women and their confrontation, but he admired them for agreeing to do it at once.

They sat in the room and waited. They knew he would come upstairs.

And both of them were weak with the shock of their discovery and the shame that they would have to face when Sean came up to meet them.

Neither of them feared that he would bluster or attempt to deny that it was he who had put the money there. There was no way now for him to say they had made it up. Dr. Johnson's word would be believed. They heard his step on the stair. "Did you close the shop?" Annabel Hogan asked. "Mike will manage."

"He'll have to a lot of the time from now on," she said. "Have you something to say? Is there some kind of accusation?" he began.

"Let's make it easy," Annabel began.

"I can explain," Sean said.

They could hear the Saturday afternoon noises of Knockglen, people tooting their car horns, children laughing and running by, free from school since lunch time. There was a dog barking excitedly, and somewhere a horse drawing a cart had been frightened. They sat, the three of them, and heard him whinnying until someone calmed him down.

Then Sean began to explain. It was a method of saving, and Mr. Hogan had understood, not exactly agreed, but acknowledged. The wages had not been great. It was known that Sean did the lion's share of the work. It had always been expected that he should build a little nest egg for himself.

Annabel sat in the high-backed chair, a wooden one they had never thought of bringing to Lisbeg. Benny sat on the broken sofa, the one she had pulled out to find the sewing machine. They hadn't rehearsed it, but they acted as a team, neither of them said a word. There were no interruptions or denials. No nods of agreement or shaking of the head in disbelief. They sat there and let him form the noose around his neck. Eventually his voice grew slower, his hand movements less exaggerated. His arms fell to his sides, and soon his head began to hang as if it were a great weight.

Then he stopped altogether. Benny waited for her mother to speak.

"You can go tonight, Sean."

It was more decisive even than Benny would have been. She looked at her mother in admiration. There was no hate, no revenge, in her tone.

Just a simple statement of the position. It startled Sean Walsh just as much.

"There's no question of that, Mrs. Hogan," he said. His face was white, but he was not now going to ask for mercy, or understanding, or a second chance.

They waited, to hear what he had to say.

"It's not what your husband would have wanted. He said in writing that he wanted me to become a partner. You have agreed that with Mr. Green."

Annabel's glance fell on the table full of envelopes. "And there is no one to confirm or deny that this was an agreement." Benny spoke then.

"Father would not have liked the police, Sean. I know you would agree with that. So mother and I are going along with what we are sure would be his wishes. We have discussed this for a long time. We think he would have liked you to leave this evening. And that he would like us to speak to no person of what has happened here today. Dr. Johnson, as you need hardly say, is silent as the grave. We only asked him here to give substance to our request that you leave, without any fuss."

"And what'll happen to your fine business when I leave?" His face had become crooked now. "What's to become of Hogan's, laughing stock of the outfitting business? Will it have its big closing down sale in June or in October? That's the only question."

Agitated and with his features in the form of a smile he walked around rubbing his hands.

"You have no idea how hopeless this place is. How its days are numbered. What do you think you'll do without me? Have old Mike, who hasn't two brains to rub together, talking to the customers and God blessing them, and God saving them, like Barry Fitzgerald in a film?

Have you, Mrs. Hogan, who don't know one end of a bale of material from another? Have some greenhorn of an eejit serving his time from some other one-horse town? Is this what you want for your great family business? Is it? Tell me, is it?"

His tone was becoming hysterical.

"What did we ever do to you that makes you turn on us like this?"

Annabel Hogan asked, her voice calm.

"You think you were good to me. Is that what you think?"

"Yes. In a word."

Sean's face was working. Benny realized she had never remotely suspected that he could feel so much.

He told a tale of being banished upstairs to servant's quarters, being patronized and invited to break bread from time to time with the air of being summoned to a palace. He said that he had run the business single-handed for a pittance of a wage and a regular pat on the head.

The cry that they would be lost without Sean Walsh, said often enough to render it meaningless. He said that his genuine and respectful admiration for Benny, the daughter of the house, was a matter of mockery, and had been thrown back in his face. He had been honourable and would have been proud to escort her to places even when she was not a physically beautiful specimen.

Neither Annabel nor Benny allowed a muscle to move in the face of the insults.

He had not intruded, imposed or in any way traded on his position. He had been discreet and loyal. And this was the thanks he was getting for it.

Benny felt a great sadness sweep over her. There was some sincerity in the way Sean spoke. If this was his version of his life, then this was his life.

"Will you stay in Knockglen?" she asked unexpectedly. "What?"

"After you leave here?"

Something clicked then. Sean knew they meant it. He looked at them, as if he had never seen either of them before.

"I might," he said. "It's the only place I've really known, you see.

They saw.

They knew there would be talk. A lot of talk. But on Monday the shop would open with Annabel in charge. They had only thirty-six hours to learn the business.

Mrs. Healy agreed to see Sean in her office. Even given his usual pallor, she thought he looked badly as if he had just had a shock.

"May I arrange to have a room here for a week?"

"Of course. But might I ask why?"

He told her that he would be leaving Hogan's. As of now. That he would therefore be leaving his accommodation there. He was vague in the extreme. He parried questions about the partnership, denied that there had been any fight or unpleasantness. He said that he would like to transfer his belongings across the road at a time when half the town wouldn't be watching, like when they were gone home to their tea.

Fonsie saw him of course, saw him carrying one by one the four cardboard boxes that made up his possessions.

"Good evening, Sean," Fonsie said gravely. Sean ignored him.

Fonsie went straight back to tell Clodagh. "I think I see a love nest starting. Sean Walsh was bringing twigs and leaves and starting to build it across in Healy's."

"Was he moving across, really?" Clodagh didn't seem as surprised as she should be.

"In stealth and with lust written all over him for Dorothy," Fonsie said.

"Well done, Benny," said Clodagh, closing her eyes and smiling.

Maire Carroll had come up to the convent to ask for a reference.

She was going to apply for a job in a shop in Dublin. As Mother Francis struggled to think of something to say about Maire Carroll that was both truthful and flattering, Maire revealed that Sean Walsh had been seen taking all his belongings and going to live in the hotel.

"Thank God, Benny," Mother Francis breathed to herself.

Sunday was the longest day that any of them had worked. It had an air of unreality because the shutters were closed so that nobody should know they were there.

They would have looked a very strange crew to anyone who saw them.

Patsy in her overalls scrubbing out the small room which had been filled with the results of a thousand cups of ill-made tea. Old Mike said that they took it in turns to make the tea and open the biscuits.

The place had all the signs of it. The Baby Belling had been brought down from Sean's quarters upstairs. From now on there would be proper tea, and even soup or toast made.

Hogan's was going to change.

And to help it change, Peggy Pine and Clodagh were there, as was Teddy Flood.

To none of them had any explanation been given apart from the fact that Sean Walsh had left, and they were in need of some advice. Clodagh said one business was the same as another. If you could run one you could run the lot, and she always hoped she might be seconded to get a steel works or a car plant on its feet.

Mike, who had never been the centre of such attention, was asked respectful questions. It was the general opinion that Mike must be addressed slowly, and his answers weighed with the same deliberation that he gave them.

To fuss Mike would be counter-productive. Let him think there was all the time in the world. Let him wander down no lanes of regret about Mr. Eddie and no tight-lipped mutterings about that Sean Walsh who wanted to be called Mister.

Slowly they pieced it together, the way the business was run. The people who had credit, and those who didn't. The way the bills had been sent out, the reminders. The salesmen who came with their books for orders. The mills, the factories.

Haltingly Mike told it all. They listened and worked out the system, such as it was.

A thousand times Annabel Hogan cursed herself for not taking an interest and forming a part of the company when her husband was alive.

Perhaps he would have liked it? It was only her own hidebound feelings that had kept her at home.

Benny wished that she had come to help her father. If only she could have had the time over again, then she would have spent Saturday afternoons here with him, learning about his life at work.

Would he have been proud of her and pleased that she was taking such an interest? Or would he have thought that she was a distraction in the all-male world of gentleman's outfitters? It was impossible to know.

And anyway she had avoided the shop a lot because of Sean Walsh.

As they toiled on, working out which bales of material were which, Benny let her mind wander. Could her parents seriously have expected her to marry Sean just because he had been helpful in the business?

And even worse, suppose she had gone along with their views? Promised herself to him, allowed his disgusting advances and been engaged to him now? Think then how impossible it would have been once they discovered his theft. The mean, grubbing, regular stealing from a kind employer who had wished him nothing but well.

Patsy had heated up the soup and served the sandwiches. They sat companionably and ate them.

"Is it wrong of us, do you think, to work on a Sunday?" Mike was fearful about the whole thing.

"Laborare est orare," Peggy Pine said suddenly.

"Could you translate for those of us without the classical education, Aunt?" Clodagh asked.

"It means that the Lord thinks working is a form of prayer," Peggy said, wiping away the crumbs and settling down to writing out proper sales tickets which Annabel could understand.

They had opened up the back door of the shop late on Saturday night so they could come and go by the lane at the rear of the premises. The sun shone on the disused back yard with its rubbish and clutter. "You could make a lovely conservatory here," Clodagh said admiringly.

"What for?" Benny asked. "To sit in, you clown."

"Customers wouldn't want to sit down, would they?"

"Your mother and you." Benny looked blank.

"Well, you are going to live here, aren't you?"

"Lord no. We'll be living in Lisbeg. We couldn't live over the shop."

"Some of us do, and manage fine," Clodagh said huffily. Benny could have bitten off her tongue. But there was no point in trying to take it back now.

Clodagh didn't seem a bit upset.

"Good for you if you can," she said. "I thought the object of all this was to try and turn this place round. You won't do that if you don't put some money into it. I assumed you were going to sell your house."

Benny wiped her forehead. Was there ever going to be any end to all this? When could she get back to living an ordinary life again?

Jack Foley telephoned Benny from nine in the morning until noon.

"She can't be at Mass all bloody morning," he grumbled. Benny telephoned Jack at home. She got his mother.

"Is that you, Sheila?" she asked. "No, Mrs. Foley. It's Benny Hogan."

She heard that Jack was out and not expected back until late. He had left quite early.

"I thought he was down in your neck of the woods, actually," Mrs. Foley said.

She made it sound like a swamp with alligators in it. Like the film Benny hadn't seen.

She forced her voice to be light and casual. No message. Just to say that she had rung for a chat.

Mrs. Foley said that she'd write it down straight away. She managed to make it sound as if the name of Benny Hogan would be added to a long list of those who had already telephoned.

It was over, and she longed to celebrate. Everything she had wanted for the shop since the day Father had died had been achieved. They had had huge support from their friends in Knockglen. Sean had been rendered unimportant.

It was a night of triumph she wanted to tell Jack all about. The awful bits and the funny bits, the look on Sean's face, Patsy making more and more tea, and sandwiches. Old Mike getting surges of energy like Frankenstein's monster. Peggy Pine showing her mother how to ring up a sale. She wanted to tell him that from now on she wouldn't be needed so desperately at home. She would be free to spend several nights a week in Dublin.

She had a terrible foreboding that she had left it all too late.

That she had been away too long.

Chapter 16

Brian Mahon said that it was great to be spending all that money paying fees for a university student when she didn't get up for her bloody lectures.

Emily said he should hush. That was unfair. Nan worked very hard, and it was rare the girl had a lie-in.

"When she is in the house it would be nice to see her, just now and again," he said.

Nan told them that she stayed with Eve out in Dunlaoghaire, on the occasions when she didn't come home. Her father said it was a pity that woman in the guest house didn't pay her fees and buy her clothes for her.

But he had to meet a man who had come in on the boat to the North Wall.

He'd been down in a docker's pub. There was a deal about a consignment.

Emily sighed. There might be a deal about a consignment, but there would also be a day's drinking. When he had gone she went upstairs.

Nan was lying on her bed with her arms folded behind her head.

"Aren't you well?"

"I'm fine, Em. Honestly." Emily sat down on the stool opposite the dressing table. There was something troubled in Nan's face, some look she had never seen before. It was surprise mixed with indecision.

Nan had never known either, not since she was a little girl. "Is it.

. . Simon?"

Normally Emily never mentioned his name. It was almost like tempting fate.

Nan shook her head. She told her mother that Simon was most devoted and attentive. He was down in Knockglen. She'd be seeing him for dinner tomorrow night. Emily was not convinced. She shook her head as she went downstairs, tidied away the breakfast things, put on her smart blouse and set out for work.

As she stood at the bus stop she wondered what was wrong with her daughter.

Back in her bedroom Nan lay and looked ahead of her. She knew there was no need to have sent the specimen to Holles Street Maternity Hospital. Her period was seventeen days late. She was pregnant.

Eve and Kit were up early. They had builders arriving and they wanted to show them from the beginning that this was a house with rules, a house like they had never known before.

They had left bags of cement and sand in the back yard the night before. The name on the sacks was Mahon.

"You must tell Nan that we're putting a few shillings into her father's pocket," Kit said.

"No, Nan wouldn't like to hear that. She doesn't want to be reminded of her father and his trade." Kit was surprised.

Nan always seemed remarkably unpretentious for such an attractive girl.

You never caught her stealing a look at herself in the mirror, or blowing about the people she had been out with.

Eve had liked her so much at the beginning, but had been very resentful of Nan taking up with the Westwards.

"You're not still bearing a grudge against her because she went out with Simon Westward are you?"

"A grudge? Me?" said Eve, laughing. She knew that most of her life had been spent bearing grudges against the family that had disowned her.

And anyway Kit had used the wrong tense. Eve was still going out with Simon. Very much so.

Heather had been on the phone, squeaking with excitement about her life in the convent and how funny and mad and superstitious everyone was.

"I hope you don't say any of that," Eve said sternly. "No, only to you. And I have another secret. I think Simon's doing a line with Nan. She rings sometimes, and I know he goes off to meet her, because he packs a bag. And he doesn't come home at night."

Eve was sure that Nan and Simon were Going All The Way. Simon wouldn't be remotely interested in a girl unless she would. It wasn't a sin for him anyway, and he wouldn't take Nan out, no matter how gorgeous she looked, unless he was getting value for it.

Because Eve knew very well that Nan was not someone her cousin Simon was going to bring home to Westlands.

When she telephoned it was as she had known it would be. The pregnancy test was positive.

Nan dressed carefully and left the empty house in Maple Gardens.

She took the bus to Knockglen.

She walked past the gates of St. Mary's Convent and looked up the long avenue. She could hear the sounds of children at play. How strange of Simon to let his sister stay there, amongst all the children of people who worked on the estate.

But from her own point of view it was good. It meant that he was tied more to Knockglen. She could come more frequently to the cottage. And there would be fewer crises about Heather being unhappy and running away from the school where she should be.

She couldn't remember clearly how far it was from the village to Westlands, but decided that it was too far to walk. Knockglen didn't have the air of a place that would have a taxi. She had heard so much bad about Healy's Hotel from Benny, Eve and Simon that she dared not risk asking them to arrange her a lift.

Nan would wait until a suitable car passed by. A middle-aged man in a green car came into view. She hailed him and as Nan had known he would, he stopped. Dr. Johnson asked her where she was heading.

"Westlands," she said simply. "Where else?" the man said.

They talked about the car. He explained it was a Morris Cowley, the cheapest end of the Ford range. He'd love a Zodiac or even a Zephyr, but you had to know when to draw the line.

"I don't think you do," said the beautiful blonde girl, whom Dr. Johnson remembered seeing somewhere before.

She had a slightly high, excited look about her. He asked no questions about her visit.

She said that a lot of people were too timid, they didn't reach for things. He should reach for a Zephyr or a Zodiac, not assume that they were beyond his grasp.

Maurice Johnson smiled and said he would discuss the notion of reaching with his wife and with his bank manager. He could see neither of them agreeing with this view, but he would certainly present it. He turned in the gates of Westlands.

"Were you going here anyway?" Nan asked, alarmed. She didn't want to clash with another visitor. "Not at all. But a gentleman, even in a Morris Cowley, always sees a lady right to the door."

She gave him a smile of such brightness, he thought to himself that men like Simon Westward who were knee high to a grasshopper had all the luck when it came to getting gorgeous women, just because they had the accent and the big house.

Nan looked up at the house. It wasn't going to be easy. But then nothing that was important had ever been easy. She took three deep breaths, and rang at the door.

Mrs. Walsh knew well who Nan Mahon was. She had heard the name on the telephone many times, and even though she discouraged Bee from gossiping, she knew that this girl, who had been in the house a couple of days after Christmas, was a friend of Eve Malone and Benny Hogan.

But just to keep things as they should be, she asked her name.

"Mahon," Nan said, in a clear, confident voice.

Simon was coming out of the morning room anyway. He had heard the car pull up and draw away.

"Was that Dr. Johnson, Mrs. Walsh? He seems to have driven off without seeing Grandfather.

He saw Nan. His voice changed. "Well, hallo," he said. "Hallo, Simon."

She stood, very beautiful in a cream-coloured suit with a red artificial flower pinned to the lapel. Her handbag and shoes were the same red. She looked as if she were dressed to go out.

"Come in and sit down," he said.

"Coffee, Mr. Simon?" Mrs. Walsh asked, but she knew she would not be needed. "No thanks, Mrs. Walsh." His voice was light and easy.

"No, I think we'll be all right for the moment."

He closed the door firmly behind them.

Aidan Lynch came up to Jack in the pub and said that Benny had taught him the Charleston.

It was really quite simple, once you learned to work the two legs separately.

"Yes," Jack Foley said.

And it looked very snazzy, Aiden said, and possibly Benny should give up her notion of becoming a librarian, and be a teacher.

After all anyone could check books in and out of a library, but not everyone could teach. Impart knowledge.

"True," Jack Foley agreed.

And so Aidan wondered, how much more was he going to have to go on making inane chat until they could get down to the point, the point being that he and Eve, who were so to speak Love's Young Dream of the university at the moment, leaving Sean and Carmel in the halfpenny place, wanted to know had there been a falling out between Benny and Jack.

"Ask her," Jack said.

"Eve has. And she says no, it's just that she can never find you."

"That's because she's always looking for me in Knockglen," Jack said.

"Have you been able to. . . you know," Aidan was the old confiding mate now.

"Mind your own business," Jack said.

"That means you haven't. Neither have I. Jesus, what do they teach them in these convents?"

"About people like us, I suppose."

They forgot about women and talked about the match and the way that some people couldn't kick a ball out of their way if it was laid down in front of them. Aidan hadn't any more information for Eve about Benny. But at least he could report that no new person had come on the scene.

"This is a surprise," Simon said. The small narrow frown that was just a half line between his eyes showed it wasn't entirely a welcome surprise.

Nan had rehearsed it. No point in small talk, and fencing. "I waited until I was certain. I'm afraid I'm pregnant," she said simply.

Simon's face was full of concern.

"Oh no," he said, moving towards her. "Oh no, Nan no, you poor darling. You poor, poor darling." He embraced her and held her close.

She said nothing. She felt his heart beat against hers. Then he drew her away, examining her face, looking to see how upset she was.

"How awful for you," he said tenderly. "It's not fair is it?"

"What isn't?"

"Everything." He waved his hands expansively. Then he went over to the window and ran his hands through his hair. "This is awful," he said. He seemed very upset.

They stood apart, Nan with her hand on the piano, Simon by the window, both of them looking out the long window at the paddock where Heather's pony stood and across at the fields where the grazing had been let and cattle moved slowly round.

Everything seemed like slow motion, Nan thought. Even the way Simon spoke.

"Will you know what to do?" he asked her. "Will you know where to go?"

"How do you mean?"

"Over all this." He waved a slow wave of his hand vaguely in the direction of her body.

"I came to you," she said.

"Yes, I know, and you were right. Utterly right." He was anxious she should know this.

"I never thought it could happen," Nan said.

"Nobody ever does." Simon was rueful, as if it happened all over the place, to everyone he knew.

Nan wanted to speak. She wanted desperately to say "What do we do now?"

But she must give him no chance to say anything hurtful or careless that she would have to respond to angrily. She must leave silences.

The expression was Pregnant Pauses, she thought with a little giggle that she fought back. Simon was about to speak.

"Nan, sweetheart," he said, "this is about as terrible as it can be.

But it will all be all right. I promise you."

"I know," she looked at him trustingly.

And then her ears began to sing a little as he told her of a friend who knew someone and it had all been amazingly simple, and the girl had said that it was much easier than going to a dentist.

And there had been no ill effects. Well, actually Nan had met the girl, but it wouldn't be fair to name names. But she was someone terribly bubbly and well-adjusted.

"But you don't mean. . . ?" She looked at him shocked. "Of course I'm not going to abandon you." He came towards her again and took her in his arms.

Relief flooded through her. But why had he talked about this silly bubbly woman who had been to have an abortion? Had he changed when he saw her stricken face?

Simon Westward stroked her hair.

"You didn't think I'd let you look after it all on your own, did you?"

he said.

Nan said nothing.

"Come on now, we both enjoyed ourselves. Of course I'll look after it."

He pulled away from her and took a cheque book out of a drawer.

"I don't know what this chap said, he did tell me a figure, but this should cover it. And I'll get the name and address of the place and everything. It's in England of course, but that's all for the best, isn't it?"

She looked at him unbelieving. "It's your child. You know that?"

"Nan, my angel, it's not a child at all. Not a speck yet."

"You do know that you were the first and there has been nobody else?"

"We're not going to upset ourselves over this, Nan. It can't be between us. You know that, I know it, we've known it since we went into our little fling."

"Why can't it be? You want to get married. You want an heir for this place. We get on well together. I fit in with your world."

Her voice was deliberately light.

But she was playing for everything in this plea. She never thought she would have had to beg like this. He had said he loved her. Every time they made love he called out how much he loved her. It was unthinkable that he was reaching for a cheque book to dismiss her.

He was gentle with her. He even took her hand. "You know that you and I are not going to marry Nan. You, of all people, so cool, so reasonable, so sensible. You know this. As do I."

"I know you said you loved me," she said. "And so I do, I love every little bit of you. I don't deny it."

"And this is love then? A cheque and an abortion?" His face looked troubled. He seemed surprised that she took this view.

"And it wouldn't have mattered, I suppose, if my father was a rich builder instead of a shabby builder."

"It has nothing to do with that."

"Well, it certainly has nothing to do with religion. It's 1958 and neither of us believes in God." He opened her hand and pressed the folded cheque into it. She looked at him in disbelief. "I'm sorry," he said.

She was still silent. Finally she said, "I'm going back now."

"How will you get home?" he asked.

"I was stupid enough to think I was coming home." She looked around her, at the portraits on the wall, the piano, the view from the window.

Something about her face touched him. She was always so very, very beautiful.

"I wish. . ." he began, but couldn't finish the sentence. "Do you know someone who would drive me back to Dublin?"

"I will, of course."

"No. It would be too artificial. Someone else."

"I don't really know anyone else. . . anyone that I could ask . .

"No. You do keep yourself to yourself. But I know what we'll do.

I'll take your car just down to the square," she said. "There'll be a bus soon. You can collect it later in the day."

"Let me at least . He moved towards her.

"No, please stay away from me. Don't touch me." He handed her the car keys. "It needs a lot of choke," he said. "I know. I've been in it a great many times."

Nan walked down the steps of Westlands. He watched from the window while she got into his car and drove away.

He knew that from the kitchen window Bee Moore and Mrs. Walsh were watching and speculating.

He looked at her with admiration as she started his car and drove down the long avenue without looking back.

She left the keys in the car. Nobody would dare to steal the car of Mr. Simon Westward in this feudal backwater. They'd all be afraid of crossing anyone at the Big House.

Mike was turning the bus. He'd be going back to Dublin in five minutes, he told her. She paid her fare.

"You could have got a return, it would have been cheaper." Mike was always anxious to give people a bargain.

"I didn't know I'd be going back," Nan said.

"Life's full of surprises," said Mike, looking at this blonde girl in the cream and red outfit, who looked much too smart for this part of the world anyway.

Bill Dunne saw Benny come into the Annexe. She was looking around, hunting for Jack, but there was no sign of him. She stood in the line with the other students. If Jack had been there he would have kept a table, and she could have gone straight to join him.

Bill waved and said he had an extra coffee. In fact he hadn't begun his own, but it seemed a way of calling her over. She looked very well today, in a chestnut-coloured sweater, the exact colour of her hair, and a pale yellow blouse underneath.

Bill and Benny talked easily. If she was glancing around for Jack she never mentioned it. And he never showed that he noticed Benny was so easy to talk to. They discussed banning the bomb and if it would ever work. Benny said she was afraid it was like asking boxers to tie one hand behind their backs, or like saying we should go back to bows and arrows once they had invented gunpowder. They wondered would Elvis really join the US Army or was it just a publicity stunt? They talked of Jack Kerouac. Would every single person that he met On the Road have been interesting? Surely some of them must have been deadly bores.

The time flew, and they had to go back to lectures. If Benny was disappointed that Jack Foley hadn't turned up she showed no sign of it.

But then women were known to be very good at hiding their feelings.

Most people didn't know what they were up to half the time.

Rosemary saw everything and noted it all. She watched Bill and Benny chatting animatedly. They seemed like great friends.

Perhaps he was consoling her about Jack. Rosemary had often thought that the feeling was unworthy, but she felt that Jack was too handsome for Benny. She thought it was like a mixed marriage.

A Black and a White, a Catholic and a non-Catholic. You heard of those that did work. But the usual rule was that they didn't. It wasn't a view that anyone would agree with so she didn't express it. Anyway people might think she was after Jack Foley for herself. Which oddly enough was not true. She had met a very nice medical student called Tom. He wouldn't be qualified for years, which would give Rosemary time to be an air hostess or something with a bit of glamour in the meantime.

Sean Walsh stood on the Quays waiting for the bus back to Knockglen.

He had stayed in a men's hostel in Dublin for five days to think things out. During the daytime he had walked through the menswear shops in Dublin trying to see himself working in any of them.

The prospect began to look less and less likely. He would not come armed with a reference. He would be unlikely to be taken on anywhere.

Little by little he began to realize how his horizons had narrowed.

The idea of buying his own place, renovating a cottage up over the quarry, was now only a fantasy. The notion of standing at the door of his own business and watching the town walk by was not one he could hold any more in his dreams. His name would be over no premises in Knockglen, the town where he had lived for ten years, and which, when all was said and done, he thought of as home. He was going to go back now with a proposition. He saw a very good-looking girl get off the bus, a blonde girl in a cream suit with red trimmings. He recognized her as the friend of Eve and Benny. The girl who had been at Mr. Hogan's funeral, and had been up at Westlands around Christmas time.

She didn't acknowledge him. She looked as if her mind were set on something else entirely.

Sean got on to the bus and looked without pleasure at Mikey, a man who was over-familiar and with an unfortunate habit of referring to people's physical appearance.

"There you are Sean, with a face as long as a wet week. Is it the return of the Prodigal we see?"

"I wish I understood what you meant, Mikey."

"It's a reference to a story Our Lord told in the New Testament, Sean.

A man like yourself nearly eating the altar in the church should know that."

"I am well aware of the parable of the Prodigal Son, but since he was a man who spent his life in wrong-doing, I'm afraid I can't see the similarity."

Mikey looked at Sean shrewdly. His wife had given him some highly coloured speculation about what might or might not have happened in Hogan's Outfitters. But obviously Sean Walsh had not run away.

"I was only wondering where the fatted calf was going to be killed, Sean," Mickey said. "Maybe they're basting it already down in Healy's Hotel."

Nan let herself into the house that she had left that morning.

She took off her cream suit and hung it carefully on a padded hanger.

She sponged it lightly with lemon juice and water. She put shoe trees in her red shoes, and she rubbed her red leather bag with some furniture cream, before wrapping it carefully in tissue paper and placing it beside her other four handbags in a drawer. She put on her best college clothes, combed her hair and went out to stand for a second time at the bus stop across the road.

Mrs. Healy had tidied up her office. She placed a big jug of daffodils on the window and two small hyacinths in plastic bowls on the filing cabinet.

She had been to Ballylee to have her hair done. The new corset was very well fitting. It managed to distribute the flesh very well. So well, in fact, that a tight skirt looked remarkably fine. She wore her high-necked blouse and cameo brooch. The ones reserved for special occasions.

And after all it would be a special occasion this afternoon. She knew that Sean Walsh was coming back today. And that he was going to make a proposal of marriage.

It was lunch time in the convent, and Mother Francis had her turn on dinner duty. That meant she walked up and down keeping order as the girls had their sandwiches. Then she supervised the tidying up of the hall, the careful cleaning and refolding of the greaseproof paper for tomorrow's packed lunch, the airing of the room and the quick exercise in the yard. She saw a group of the girls explaining to Heather Westward the nature of rosary beads.

"Why do you call them a pair, there's only one?" Heather looked at the necklace of beads.

"They're always called a pair." Fiona Carroll, the youngest of the badly behaved Carroll children from the grocery, was scornful.

"What does it mean "Irish Horn"?" Heather was interested. "That's just what they're made from," Siobhan Flood, the butcher's granddaughter, dismissed it.

"So what does it do?" Heather demanded, looking fearfully at the rosary beads.

� was not at all convinced that it did nothing, that you did things with it, you used it to pray with, that was all. That the spacings on the beads meant that you said ten Hail Marys and then stopped and said a Glory Be and then an Our Father.

"Like the Lord's Prayer?" Heather asked.

"Yes, but the proper way," Fiona Carroll said, in case there should be any doubt about it.

They explained that the whole point was not to say one Hail Mary more than was needed. That was why they were made.

Mother Francis had an art of listening to one set of conversations while being thought to be in the middle of others.

Her heart was heavy when she heard the explanations being given to the unfortunate Heather.

After all her teaching, this is what they thought. They thought the point of this beautiful prayer to Our Lady was never to let yourself say one more Hail Mary than was necessary.

Wouldn't a teacher be very foolish to think that anything ever got into their heads? Perhaps the Mother of God would be touched and pleased by the innocence of children. Mother Francis would, at this particular lunch time, have liked to take them out individually and murder them one by one.

Kit answered the phone at lunch time. It was Eve wanting to know if Benny could stay the night. She knew the answer would be yes, but between them there had always been courtesies like this.

Kit was pleased. She wanted to know was there a dance or an occasion?

"No, there's not." Eve sounded worried. "She said she wants her mother to get used to her being away from home."

"And what about Jack Foley?"

"That's the question I wanted to ask and didn't," Eve said.

Hogan's had closed for lunch. Annabel, Patsy and Mike adjourned to the back room and ate shepherd's pie and tinned beans. Mike said he hadn't felt as well in years. These midday dinners in the shop would build you up for the afternoon. Patsy said it was a grand, handy place to cook. They should move up here altogether.

Nan tried three pubs before she found them. It was nearly closing time. Almost the Holy Hour when the Dublin city pubs closed between half past two and half past three.

"Well, look who's here." Bill Dunne was pleased. "Caught you, Nan.

You're on a pub crawl," said Aidan. Jack as always said the right thing. He said it was great to see her and what would she like.

Nan said she was sick and tired of studying and she had come out to find a few handsome men to take her mind off her books. They were all flattered to think she had set out to look for them.

They sat around her in an admiring circle. She looked fresh in her pale green jumper with a dark green skirt and jacket. Her eyes sparkled as she laughed and joked with them.

"How goes the romance with Milord?" Aidan asked. "Who?"

"Come on. Simon."

"I haven't seen him for ages," she said.

Aidan was surprised. Only last night Eve had been fulminating about it all. "Did it end in tears?" Aidan knew that Eve would demand the whole story from him, not just half said, half understood bits of conversation.

"Not a bit. Nothing could come of it. We knew that. He's one world, I'm another," Nan said.

"That's establishment baloney. Just because he's part of the crumbling classes," Bill Dunne said.

"Exactly. And much as I know we should be nice to the crumbling classes, they're a bit hard to take," said Nan.

Bill, Jack and Aidan realized immediately that this Simon was besotted with Nan, but that she had thrown him over because she couldn't go along with all that would be involved if she was to play the game as they wanted to play it at the Big House.

Aidan knew that Eve would be very pleased with this news. Jack knew that Nan was just saying what he knew already. Only a few weeks ago he had seen Simon approach Nan and beg to be taken back into her warmth, while she had been polite and distant. Bill Dunne was pleased that he could report to everyone else that Nan Mahon was in circulation again.

The barman mentioned that drinking up time had long been exceeded. He looked stern, young law students weren't going to be much help to him if he got an endorsement on his licence.

Bill and Aidan drifted back to the university. Jack dallied and spoke to Nan.

"I don't suppose you'd think of being really bad and coming to the pictures with me?"

"Lord no, more Swamp Women!"

"We could look at a paper." They bought an Evening Herald. Nan said, "What about Benny?"

"What about her?"

"I mean where is she?"

"Search me," said Jack. There was nothing they could agree on.

They walked slowly through the Green debating this one and that, heads close together inside the pages of the newspaper.

It took them a long time to get to Grafton Street. They still hadn't made up their minds. The pubs were open again now. The Holy Hour was well over.

"Let's have a drink and discuss it," Jack suggested. He had a Guinness. Nan had a pineapple juice. Jack told her a long, sad saga about Benny never being there. He said he knew things were difficult in Knockglen and that Benny was trying to get her mother started in the shop. But he wondered was she taking it all on her shoulders too much?

"She shouldn't stay holding her hand," Nan agreed with him. She explained that she had never felt responsible for her mother, who went out to work every day and didn't need anyone to mind her.

Jack brightened. He had been afraid that he was being selfish.

No, Nan told him, it was a sign of how much he liked Benny around that he missed her.

He warmed to this view. Take tonight for example. There was a club dance. Everyone brought a partner. And here would he be, Jack Foley, yet again with no partner.

He looked across at her suddenly. "Unless, of course. . . ?"

"I wouldn't like to. Benny might. . . ?"

"Oh, come on. Benny won't mind. Didn't she ask us to go to the pictures together?"

Nan looked doubtful.

"You're not worried about your old pal Cavalry Twill, are you?"

"I told you, that's long forgotten. He's no part of my life."

"Well then." Jack was easy and somewhat cheered. "Will we meet at the club?"

Carmel was on the Ladies" Committee. It involved helping to prepare the supper for the functions. Sean liked her to be involved. He was Treasurer of course, and very important. She was buying bread for the sandwiches when she met Benny, who was trying to turn her back on the sweet counter and make do with an apple.

"It's the Tiffin Bar that's almost reaching out its arms at me from the shelf," Benny said. "Thank God you came in. I was nearly going to buy it."

"It'd be a shame to go back on the Tiffin now," Carmel said.

Benny didn't like the feeling that seemed to hang unspoken that there had been years of wedging chocolate bars down her throat.

She bought the apple unenthusiastically.

"It's a pity you're not going to be here tonight," Carmel said.

"The party's going to be great. They've given us much more money than usual. We're going to have sponge flans filled with whipped cream and decorated with chocolate flake. Oh, sorry, Benny, but you're not here, so you won't be tempted anyway."

"I am here as it happens. I'm staying with Eve," Benny said. "Great," said Carmel warmly. "See you tonight."

"Ring him," Eve said. "Ring him and tell him you're in town."

"He knows. He must know. I told him."

"They never listen. Ring him."

Benny said she'd have to talk to that woman, Jack's mother, who always made people sound as if they were looking for autographs instead of trying to speak to her son. Eve said that was nonsense. Benny had only phoned the house once. She must ring now. Jack would be delighted.

From the house in Dunlaoghaire Benny eventually did phone. "I'm sorry, but he's gone out to the Rugby Club. They're having some kind of party tonight. He said he'd be late back."

"He can't have known you were in town," Eve said. "No."

They sat at the kitchen table. Neither of them suggested that Benny should just dress up and go in to the club anyway.

Neither of them said it had all been the forgetfulness of men, and that Jack would be delighted to see her.

They concentrated instead on Kit Hegarty who was going out with Kevin Hickey's father.

"Don't cheapen yourself now, remember," Eve warned. "He won't respect you," said Benny.

Kit said that it was wonderful to see the high moral tone of the younger generation. She was relieved to know that this was their attitude.

"It's not our attitude for ourselves. We have no restraint at all," Eve assured her. "It's only for you."

"I wish we had no restraint," Benny said gloomily. "We might be better off."

Annabel Hogan had brightened up the shop considerably by taking away some of the wooden panels and surrounds in the window. It did not look nearly so sepulchral and solemn. She had V-necked jumpers in several colours displayed on stands. For the first time a man coming into Hogan's might be able to browse and choose rather than knowing what he wanted before he came in the door.

It also meant that she could see out much more clearly, without having to peer.

She saw Sean Walsh walk into Healy's Hotel without a backward glance at the business where he had worked for so long.

She knew that he had left his belongings there while he went away to make his plans. Perhaps he had got a job somewhere and he had returned to collect his belongings. Peggy Pine had said that Sean had hopes of Mrs. Healy. Annabel doubted it. Dorothy Healy was no fool. She would know quicker than most that Sean would not have left Hogan's as he did unless there had been an incident. He was no longer an aspiring merchant in the town.

"I'm no longer a person of substance in this town," Sean Walsh said to Mrs. Healy.

She inclined her head graciously. There had been a time when he thought he would have more to offer, something to bring to the request he was going to make. But circumstances had changed. Her head was angled like a bird considering its options. Sean spoke of his admiration for her. The respect in which she was held. The potential in Healy's Hotel, a potential as yet not fully realized. He said there was a need for an overseer, someone to look after the daily business, the nuts and bolts, while Mrs. Healy's own flair was used where it was of most use in greeting the customers, and being a presence.

Dorothy Healy waited.

He spoke of his admiration, his gratitude for her interest in him and his career, the affection that he hoped he was correct in thinking had grown between them. He was sorrier than he could ever say that things had not worked out as he would have liked.

He had always envisaged himself making this speech, when he was a partner in a business and the owner of a small property on the Quarry Road.

He spoke a lot of the time with his head hanging, and addressed many of his remarks to Mrs. Healy's knees. She gazed at his dead-looking hair, which would be perfectly all right if he used a good shampoo and went to a proper barber. When he looked up at her anxiously, his pale face working with the anxiety of his proposal, she smiled at him encouragingly.

"Yes, Sean?"

"Will you accept my proposal of matrimony?" he said. "I shall be happy to accept," said Dorothy Healy. She saw some colour flood into his face and join the look of disbelief. He reached out and touched her hand.

He didn't realize that he was a far likelier prospect now than he had been before.

Mrs. Healy wanted no refurbished cottage up on a path by the quarry.

She wanted no connections with a dying clothing business across the road. She needed a man who could manage the heavy and duller side of the hotel for her. And she knew, since Sean Walsh must have been thrown out because he was found with his hand in the till across the road, that he would have to be careful in his new employ.

She had him where she wanted him now. "I don't know what to say," he said.

But as the afternoon became evening they found a lot to say.

Plans were made, big plans and little plans. A jeweller in Ballylee would be visited for a ring. Father Ross would be consulted about a date. Sean would visit Dublin and buy three suits off the peg, since he was a stock size. Sean would be declared the Manager as of Monday.

He would live in the new building which had been erected at the back.

Sean hadn't been aware of its purpose. He had thought it some kind of store house.

Together they looked at it. It had all the makings of a fine family house.

As if Mrs. Healy had known that this would happen one day.

Paddy Hickey was a fine dancer. And he said Kit was light as a feather.

"It was the hand of God that directed my son to your house," he said.

"That and the notice I have up in the university," Kit replied. "Will you come down to Kerry with me?" he asked. She looked at his big square handsome face. He was an honourable man, who wouldn't run away from her.

"I might, one day, go down and see the place you're from," she said.

He had told her that his family was reared. That Kevin was the youngest lad. That his place was grand and modern, the kitchen had the best Formica in it, and you could eat your dinner off the tiled floor.

He said he had nice neighbours and relatives who knew all about Mrs. Hegarty the widow in Dublin who had given such a home to Kevin.

"I'm only a recent widow," Kit said.

"Well, I didn't know that, until you told me, and they need never know it, and I suppose Joe Hegarty would be pleased to know that someone was looking after you."

"I never called him Joe, in all the years. I never called him that," she said almost wonderingly.

"Maybe that was part of it all," said Kevin Hickey's father, who had every intention of making this woman his wife.

The mournful sound of the fog horn boomed around Dunlaoghaire Harbour.

Eve was so used to it now that she hardly heard it any more.

But she stirred and looked at her clock with the luminous hands.

It was half past three.

She listened. Benny didn't seem to be breathing the way a sleeping person does. She must be lying there awake.

"Benny?"

"It's all right. Go back to sleep."

Eve turned on the light. Benny was propped up against her pillows in the small camp bed. Her face was tearstained.

Eve swung her legs out of the bed and reached for her cigarettes.

"It's just that I love him so much," wept Benny. "I know, I know."

"And he must have gone off me. Just like that."

"It's a misunderstanding. For God's sake, if he was going with anyone else we'd know."

"Would we?"

"Of course we would. You should have rung earlier. You'd have saved yourself all this. You'd be out somewhere in a steamy car trying to keep your clothes on you."

"Maybe I kept them on me too much."

"Stop blaming yourself. You always think it's your fault."

"Would you tell me if you knew?

Really and truly would you tell me? You'd not keep it from me to be kind?"

"I swear I'd tell you," Eve said. "I swear I'd not let you be made a fool of."

The party was great. Carmel was in the kitchen most of the time and so didn't see the way Jack Foley and Nan Mahon danced together. And how they found everything funny, and hardly talked to anyone else.

Carmel was busy washing plates when Jack Foley got Nan's coat and took her home.

"I'm honoured to be allowed to take you home. Bill Dunne and the boys say you never tell them where you live."

"Maybe I don't want them to know," Nan said. They sat outside the door of Maple Gardens and talked. The light of the street lamp on Nan's face made her look very beautiful. Jack leaned across and kissed her.

She didn't move away when he bent over to kiss her. Instead she clung to him eagerly.

It was very easy to kiss and hold Nan Mahon. She didn't move away and pull back just as you were feeling aroused. He stroked her breast through the lilac silky dress she wore under her coat.

His voice was husky. There was no other sensation outside this car.

When she did pull away she spoke to him, cool and unruffled and different to the woman he had held in his arms, pliant, eager and wrapping herself close to him.

"Jack, don't you think we should talk about Benny?"

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"She's not here." He realized that it sounded too harsh, too dismissive. "What I mean is that anything between Benny and me has nothing to do with this." He reached for her again.

She leaned over and kissed him on the nose.

"Goodnight, Jack," she said, and vanished. He saw her let herself into the house and the door close behind her.

It was the same ritual of hanging up the clothes, sponging them and brushing them.

Cleaning her face with cream and doing her stretching exercises.

Though she might have to change those exercises. Nan lay in her bed and thought about the events of the day. She laid her two hands on her stomach where a lab report had proved what she knew already. That a child was beginning to grow. She did not think about Simon Westward.

She would never think about him again, no matter what happened.

She lay in the bedroom that she and her mother had decorated over the years, the years when they had told each other Nan was like a princess, and that she would leave Maple Gardens and find a prince.

Her first attempt had not been very successful. Nan stared ahead of her unseeingly and thought out the options. She did not want to go to this person and have something that was less important than tooth extraction. She did not want the sordidness of it, the shabby end of something that had been important. She didn't think it was a speck, as Simon had said. But she didn't believe it was a baby either.

If it were done, then it would all be over, the slate would be clean, she could continue with her studies.

She looked over at her desk. She didn't enjoy them. They took up too much time. They ate into the hours she should have been grooming herself, and preparing for the places to go. She found no great joy sitting in those large musty chalk-smelling halls, or the cramped tutorial rooms. She wasn't academic. Her tutor had told her more than once that she would not make the Honours group. What was the point of struggling on doing a pass degree while the kudos was on the Honours students?

She could go to England and have the child. She could have it adopted.

Take less than a year out of her life. But why have a child to give it away? Go through all that just to make some anonymous couple's dream come true?

If she lived in a remote country village in the West of Ireland, the community might have excused a beautiful girl falling for the Squire and bringing up his child, ashamed but still accepted.

In parts of working-class Dublin, an unexpected child would have been welcomed in the family. The child would grow up believing its granny was its mother.

But not in Maple Gardens. It was the beginnings of respectability for the Mahons and their neighbours. And for Nan and Em it would be the end of the dream.

It looked as if a lot of the options weren't really options after all.

It was too early for morning sickness. But she didn't take any breakfast. Em looked at her anxiously.

"You'll be seeing Simon this evening, is that right?" she asked, hoping to see Nan's face light up. But she was disappointed.

"I haven't seen Simon for weeks and weeks, Em."

"But I thought you said "I'm saying now, and I want you to remember it, I haven't been going out with Simon Westward since just after Christmas."

Emily Mahon looked at her daughter astonished. But there was something about the set of Nan's jaw that made it seem very important.

Emily nodded, as if she had taken the instruction to heart. It didn't make it any easier to understand. Either Nan had been lying when she told her of the outings to smart places with Simon, or else she was lying now.

Jack came into the Annexe. Benny waved eagerly from a table. She had been holding a chair against all comers, by draping her scarf and her books all over it.

She looked so glad to see him and a lurch of guilt shook him.

Nobody had reported his long hours dancing with Nan to her anyway; he was slightly afraid that Carmel might have seen it as her duty to make sure that Benny was informed.

But Benny's eyes were shining with pleasure to see him. "How was the party?"

"Oh, you know, these things are always the same. Everyone was fine, very cheerful." There had been two wins to celebrate, some fine playing and thanks to Sean they were in funds. He told her all those details and little about the night itself.

"It was a pity you couldn't have been in Dublin."

"But I was.

Remember I said it would be early-closing day and Mother was going to have a rest and an early night."

"I'd forgotten," Jack admitted. There was a pause.

"And of course you didn't know about the party."

"Well, I did, because I ran into Carmel when she was shopping for it.

And she told me."

She looked unsure. He felt a heel, not just for holding Nan so close last night, but because Benny had thought he mightn't have asked her.

"I'd have loved you to have been there. I just forgot. Honestly, I'm so used to your not being there. What did you do?"

"I went to the pictures with Eve."

"You should have rung me."

"I did, but it was too late."

Jack hadn't even looked at the message pad this morning. His mother would have written the names of anyone who called.

"Ah, Benny, I'm very sorry. I'm stupid." He banged his head as if it were wood.

He seemed very sorry. "Well, no harm done," she said.

"I ran into Nan. And since she wasn't doing anything I asked her to come instead. I think she quite enjoyed it., Benny's smile was broad.

Everything was all right. He had genuinely forgotten. He wasn't trying to tell her anything. He wasn't wriggling out. He would have loved her to have been with him last night.

Thank God he had met Nan and invited her. Now she had nothing to worry about.

Chapter 17

Jack woke suddenly with his heart pounding. He was in the middle of a very violent dream. It was so real it was hard to shake it off.

Benny's father, Mr. Hogan, was standing at the top of the quarry pushing the black Morris Minor belonging to Dr. Foley over the edge.

Mr. Hogan had red burning coals where his eyes should be, laughing while the car bounced to the bottom of the quarry with a crash.

It was the crash that had jerked Jack awake. He lay there, panting.

Beside him lay Nan, sleeping innocently, her hands folded under her face, a little smile on her lips.

They lay in Eve's cottage, the place he had come for a party just after Christmas.

They had needed somewhere to go, Nan said. This was a perfectly safe place. Nobody ever passed by. The key was in the stone wall.

Nan had been wonderful. So cool and practical, saying they must bring a spirit lamp and perhaps their own sheets and towels.

Jack would never have thought of that. She said they should keep the curtains very tightly drawn and leave the car hidden in the square lest anyone see it. There was a place behind the bus shelter where nobody would think to look.

She was naturally observant.

She had said that she never thought it was possible that she could desire someone so much.

He had been worried about everything of course, but she said that it would be all right. The alternative was just to go on being a tease.

She wanted to love him completely and honestly. It had been so wonderful, compared to that girl in Wales, which had all been just rushed and quick and awkward. Nan's beautiful body was magical in his arms. She seemed to love everything as much as he did.

It must have been awful for her the first time, but she had made no complaint. What excited him most was her calm exterior when they met in college. The cool Nan Mahon looking fresh and immaculate was the same girl who wrapped herself around him and gave him an ecstasy that he had not known could exist. This was their third visit to the cottage. He had still not spoken to Benny. It was just that he didn't know what to say.

There was going to be an Easter Pageant at the School. Heather wanted to take part. "We told your brother that you wouldn't be involved in religious instruction," Mother Francis explained.

"But this isn't religion. It's drama. It's only a play," Heather pleaded. It had been an exercise in spirituality intended to give the children some feeling of the message of Easter by re-enacting the Passion of Our Lord. Mother Francis sighed.

"Well, who'll explain it to your brother? Will you, or will I?"

"I don't think we'll bother him about it. He's like a weasel.

Could I be Hitler, please, Mother, please!"

"Could you be who?"

"Um. . . Pontius Pilate. I got confused. .

"We'll have to see. But first I will have to discuss it with Mr. Westward."

"It's too late," said Heather triumphantly. "He's gone to England today. To Hampshire. To look for a wife."

Mossy Rooney cleared out the back of Hogan's shop, and made the derelict yard look as if it had always intended to be a garden.

Benny and her mother decided they must put flowers and even shrubs in it.

Mossy said that they could even have a bit of a garden seat. The place was nice and sheltered.

Patsy had told him that if the mistress had an ounce of sense she'd sell Lisbeg and move into the shop good and proper. There was plenty of room in it, and why did she want to be rattling around like a tin can in a big empty house?

If they were in the shop it would be easier for Patsy to come and do a bit of daily work. It wouldn't be as heavy and constant as looking after a big house where nobody lived. Annabel Hogan had not admitted it to herself yet, but as she stood beside Benny watering in the fuchsias that they had taken at Eve's request from the cottage, she began to think that it might be the wisest course. In a way it would be nice just to walk upstairs and be home. Or be able to stretch out your feet on the sofa. But time enough to think of that later. There was more than enough to sort out already. Benny had been careful not to make the first floor, the lumber room where they had found the money in the sewing machine, a place they didn't visit. Bit by bit she managed to get rid of what had to go. Very gradually she started to ferry things up from Lisbeg. Little by little she and Patsy were transforming that big room into a place where it would be quite possible to sit and spend an evening. They took a wireless, some chairs that did not have the springs protruding. They polished a shabby old table and put place mats on it. Soon they were having their meals up here. Shep spent more time nosing around the lane, prowling the small garden which he regarded as his own exercise yard, and sitting proprietorially in the shop, than he did lording it over an empty Lisbeg.

Soon the shop was beginning to feel like home. Soon Benny would be able to feel more free.

Dekko Moore asked Dr. Johnson was there a chance that Mrs. Hogan might part with Lisbeg.

Very often customers came in to him, people from big places, loaded down with money, and they often enquired were there any houses of a certain style going to come up on the market.

"Give them a few months, yet," Dr. Johnson said. "I imagine they'll be moved up above by the end of the summer, but you wouldn't want to rush them."

Dekko said it was extraordinary the way things had gone already.

He had gone into the shop to buy a pair of socks the other day, and he had spent a fortune.

Nan and Jack ran down the track from the quarry walk to the square.

The Morris Minor was hidden behind the bus shelter. For the third time they were lucky nobody was about. It was only six thirty in the morning. The car started and they were on the road to Dublin.

"One morning it won't start. And then we're for it," Jack said, squeezing her hand.

"We're very careful. We won't be caught," she said. She looked out of the window, as they sped past the fields and farms on their way to Dublin.

He sighed, thinking of the nights and early mornings they had spent in Eve Malone's small bed. But a part of him felt almost sick at the risk they were taking. Eve would kill them if she knew they were using her house like this.

Knockglen was a village. Someone must see them sooner or later.

Knockglen was much more than a village. It was Benny's home town.

Benny.

He tried to put her out of his mind. He had managed to see her only with other people for the last two weeks. Since this amazing explosive thing with Nan had begun. He didn't think that Benny noticed. He made sure that Bill or Aidan or Johnny was there, or else he called over people to join them.

They never went to the pictures alone; on the hard-fought nights that Benny was able to stay in Dublin he made sure they went out in a group.

He tried not to include Nan with them, though sometimes Benny brought her along.

Nan told him that she accepted exactly what he said, that whatever happened between them had nothing to do with Jack and Benny. They were two different worlds.

Yes, he had said that in the heat of the moment, but when he saw Benny's trusting face, and laughed at her funny remarks. . . when she turned out on a cold afternoon to watch him at a practice match, when she offered to help Carmel with the sandwiches, when he realized that he actually wanted to be with her alone and to touch her the way he touched Nan, then he felt confused.

It was easy to say that your world was compartmentalized. But in real life it wasn't easy.

Nan must be much more mature than all of them if she could accept that what Jack felt for her was a huge and almost overpowering passion. It had everything to do with desire and very little to do with sharing a life. They didn't talk much in the car, while with Benny they would both find the words stumbling over each other.

Jack felt a great sense of anxiety as the traffic began to build up a little on the road and they approached Dublin. Nan told him nothing of her home and family.

"How do they let you stay out all night?" he had asked. "How do yours let you stay out all night?" she had replied. The answer was simple.

That he was a boy. Nothing terrible could happen to him, like getting pregnant.

But he didn't say it. He didn't dare to say it out of politeness, and out of superstition.

Nan watched fields turn into first factory premises and then housing estates. They would soon be home. She would ask him to leave her at the corner of Maple Gardens. As soon as his car had disappeared, Nan would go to the bus stop.

She would come into college early and get herself ready for lectures.

Not that her heart was in them. But she couldn't go home. Her father thought she was staying with Eve Malone in Dunlaoghaire, instead of sneaking into Eve's cottage in Knockglen.

It would confuse and worry her mother. Let Jack go home to his house with hot water and clean shirts, and a mildly perplexed mother and maid putting bacon and egg on the table. He had nothing to worry about, a lover and a patient loving girlfriend.

From what you read in books it was what all men wanted.

Nan bit her lip as they drove along in silence. She would have to tell him very soon. She could see no other way out.

That night when she lay on her bed she examined the options. This was the only one that looked as if it might possibly work.

She was not going to think about Benny. Jack had said that was his business. It had nothing to do with what was between them.

Nan didn't really believe that. But he had said that it was up to him to cope with. She had enough to worry about.

She could not confide in one single person because there was nobody alive who would condone what she was about to do. For the second time in a month she was going to have to tell a man that she was pregnant.

And with the unfairness of life, the second one who had no duty or responsibility would probably be the one to do the right thing.

Mossy's mother said that May was nice for a wedding. Paccy Moore said they could have the reception in the room behind his shop.

After all, his sister Bee was being the bridesmaid, and Patsy didn't have a home of her own.

It wasn't what Patsy had hoped. The guests coming through the cobbler's shop. But it was either that or let it be known she was coming in with nothing to her mother-in-law's house and have the gathering there.

What she would really have liked was to be able to use Lisbeg, and have the reception in the Hogans" house, but it didn't look likely. The master would only be four months gone. The mistress and Benny spent that much time above in the shop they would have little time and energy to spare for Patsy. She was getting a dress at Pine's. She had been paying for it slowly since Christmas.

Clodagh told Benny about Patsy's hopes. "It may be impossible, I'm not suggesting you do it, it's just that you'd hate to hear afterwards and not have realized."

Benny was very grateful to be told. It was bad of them not to have thought of it in the first place. They had assumed that all the running would be made by Mossy's side and didn't even think of suggesting a venue.

Patsy's joy knew no bounds. It was one in the eye for Mossy's mother.

She began to get the wedding invitations printed.

"And how's your own romance?" Clodagh enquired. "I believe he was down here the other night."

"God, I wish he had been. I think it's going all right. He's always coming looking for me and suggesting this and that, but there's a cast of thousands as well."

"Ah well, that's all to the good. He wants to show you to his friends.

And he has friends. That lunatic across the road there has no friends except people who sell pinball machines and juke boxes. I could have sworn I saw him at Dessie Burns" getting petrol."

"Who? Fonsie?"

"No, your fellow. Oh well, I suppose there's dozens of handsome blokes in college scarves getting petrol in Morris Minors."

"It's not only Mr. Flood who's seeing visions," Benny said to Jack next day. "Clodagh thought she saw you getting petrol in Knockglen the other night."

"Would I have come to Knockglen and not gone to see you?" he asked.

It was a ridiculous question. It didn't even need an answer. She had only brought it up to show him that he was a person there, that he had an identity. He breathed slowly through his teeth and remembered the shock that he and Nan had got when he realized the petrol gauge was showing empty. They had to fill up there and then. There would be nowhere open when they made their dawn escape.

Another very near miss. He wouldn't tell Nan about it. He hoped Benny wouldn't.

Sean Walsh was taking his early morning walk. These days he was accompanied by the two unattractive Jack Russell terriers with whom he would be sharing his home. They were less yappy and unpleasant if they were wearied by this harsh morning exercise.

He had ceased to look at the houses with the resentment and longing that he had once felt.

Things had turned out very much better than he would have dared to hope. Dorothy was a woman in a million.

From Eve Malone's cottage he saw two figures emerge. The early sunlight was in his eyes and he couldn't see who they were.

They ran hand in hand, almost scampered down the way that led to the square. He squinted after them. They both looked vaguely familiar.

Or perhaps he was imagining it. They must be Dublin people who had rented or borrowed the cottage.

But where were they going?

It was much too early for a bus. There had been no cars in the square.

It was a mystery, and that was something Sean Walsh didn't like at all.

Lilly Foley spoke to her husband about Jack.

"Three nights last week, and three again this week, John. You'll have to say something."

"He's a grown man."

"He's twenty. That's not a grown man."

"Well, it's not a child. Leave him be. When he's passed over for a team, or fails an exam, that's the time to talk to him."

"But who could he be with? Is it the same girl, or a different one each time?"

"It's a fair distance on the old milometer, I notice, whoever it is."

Jack's father laughed roguishly.

He had found a receipt for petrol from Knockglen. It must be that big girl Benny Hogan. Which was a turn-up for the books, and where on earth did they go? Her father had died, but her mother was strict.

Surely she wouldn't have been able to entertain Jack in her house?

Heather rang Eve. "When are you coming home? I miss you."

Eve felt absurdly flattered.

She said she'd come soon, next weekend or the weekend after. "It doesn't have to be the weekend." Eve realized that was true. It didn't.

She was free to leave any afternoon. She could travel on the bus with Benny. She'd have tea with Mother Francis and the nuns and then take Heather up to the cottage. She'd hear at first hand how the plans for the Easter Pageant were going. She could go to see Benny's mother and admire the changes in Hogan's. She could call to Mario's to end the evening. Knockglen was full of excitement these days. She might go tomorrow, but she had better check it wasn't a night that Benny was coming to town. It would be silly to miss her.

Benny said they'd skip a lecture and meet on the three o'clock bus.

That way they'd have a bit of time. They had sandwiches in the place that the boys liked. The pub with the relaxed view about the Holy Hour.

Aidan, Jack and Bill were there. Rosemary had called in to borrow ten shillings. She needed to have a hair-do in a very good place.

Tom the medical student had been harder to pin down than she had hoped.

It was time for heavy remedies now, like new hairstyles.

Nobody felt like work, but Eve and Benny refused the offer of being taken to play some slot machines in an amusement arcade.

"I'm getting the bus," said Benny.

"Goodbye, Cinderella," Jack blew her a kiss. His eyes were very warm.

She must have been mad to worry about him.

Benny and Eve left the pub.

Aidan said that he felt sure those two would be up all night and maybe bopping till dawn in Mario's.

"What?" Jack spilled some of his drink. He hadn't realized that Eve was going back to her cottage. He had arranged to meet Nan on the Quays at six o'clock. They had been planning to go to the very same place.

Nan Mahon walked briskly down towards the river. Her overnight bag contained the usual sheets, pillowcases, candlesticks, breakfast and supper materials. Jack just brought a primus stove and something to drink.

But this time Nan had packed a bottle of wine as well. They might need it. Tonight was the night she was going to tell him.

Heather was overjoyed to see Eve. As she went through the school hall she called her over excitedly. There was a rehearsal in progress, and she was wearing a sheet. Heather Westward was playing Simon of Cyrene, the man who helped Jesus to carry his cross.

It was something that Knockglen would not have believed possible a few short weeks ago.

"Are you coming to cheer me on when we do it for real?" Heather wanted to know.

"I don't think cheering you on is what Mother Francis had in mind. .

"But I'm one of the good people. I help him. I step forward and lighten his burden," Heather said.

"Yes. I'll certainly come and support you."

"You see, I won't have any relations here like everyone else has." Eve promised that she would be there when the pageant was performed. She might even bring Aidan so that Heather would have two people. Eve Malone knew very well what it was like to be the only girl in the school who had nobody to turn up with a cake for the sale of work or with applause for the pageants and the plays.

That had been her lot all during her years in St. Mary's. She let Heather get back to rehearsal and said she'd see her later in the cottage. It was time to talk to Mother Francis.

Eve said she had to go down to Healy's Hotel to have a cup of coffee so that she could get a close-up look at Love's Young Dream, Dorothy and Sean, Great Lovers of our Time. Mother Francis said she wasn't to be making a jeer out of them. Everyone was being very restrained, and Eve must be the same.

Hadn't it turned out better than anyone dared to hope, Mother Francis said sternly, and Eve realized that she must have known or suspected something of the secret Benny had told her, the missing money and the terror of the confrontation.

But if she did, it would never be discussed.

Up in her own cottage, waiting for Heather to come pounding up the convent path, Eve looked around.

There was something different. Not just the way things were placed.

Mother Francis came here often. She polished and she dusted.

Sometimes she rearranged things. But this was different.

Eve couldn't think what it was. It was just a feeling that someone else had been there. Staying there, cooking even.

Sleeping in her bed. She ran her hand across the range. Nobody had used it. Her bed was made with the neat corners she had learned at school.

Eve shivered. She was becoming fanciful. All those stories about the place being haunted must have got to her. But on a bright April evening this was ridiculous.

She shook herself firmly and started getting the fire going.

Heather would need toast within minutes of her arrival.

Later, down in Healy's Hotel, Eve saw Sean. In his dark manager's suit.

"Might I be the first to congratulate you?" she said. "That's uncommonly gracious of you, Eve." Eve enquired politely about when they intended to marry. Was courteously interested in the expansionist plans for the hotel, the honeymoon that would include the Holy City and the Italian lakes, and enquired whether Mrs. Healy was around so that she could express her congratulations and pleasure personally.

"Dorothy is having a rest. She does that in the early evenings," Sean said, as if he were describing the habits of some long extinct animal in a museum.

Eve stuffed her hand into her mouth to stop any sound coming out.

"I see you've decided to capitalize on your property," Sean said.

Eve looked at him blankly.

"Let your cottage out to people."

"No, I haven't," she said. "Oh, I'm sorry."

She thought he was manoeuvring the conversation around to a point where he would ask her to rent it to him or to let it to someone he knew.

A feeling of revulsion rose in her throat. She decided that this must be nipped in the bud. Sean Walsh must be left under no illusion that her home could be let to anyone, not to anyone for money.

"No, I'm sorry for speaking so sharply Sean. It's just that I never intend to. I'm keeping it for myself and my friends."

"Your friends. Yes," he said.

Suddenly he realized who he had seen coming out of Eve's cottage.

It was that blonde girl he had seen several times before, most recently getting off the Knockglen bus, on the Quays in Dublin.

And the man. Of course he remembered who he was. He was Benny's boyfriend. The doctor's son.

So that little romance hadn't lasted long. And there had been precious little said about its being over.

He smiled a slow smile. There was something about it that made Eve feel very uneasy. That was twice this afternoon she had got goosebumps. She must be getting very jumpy. Aidan was right. Eve Malone was a deeply neurotic woman. She felt an overwhelming urge to be away from Sean Walsh and out of his presence.

She jumped up and started to hasten out of the hotel. "You'll pass on my good wishes to Mrs. Healy," she tried to say Dorothy, but somehow the word wouldn't form in her mouth.

The traffic was bad on the Quays. Jack saw Nan but he couldn't attract her attention. She was leaning against the wall, and looking down into the Liffey. She seemed many miles away.

Eventually by hooting and shouting he managed to make her hear him.

She walked threading her way confidently between the parked cars in the traffic jam. He thought again how beautiful she was, and how hard it was to resist these nights with her. However, he would have to resist it tonight. His heart nearly stopped when he realized how near they had been to discovery. In future they would have to check and double check that Eve was not going home mid-week.

It was terrifying enough that time they had seen the man with the dogs, the tall thin fellow that Benny hated so much, the one there had been all the fuss over about getting him to leave.

Nan slipped into the car easily and laid her overnight bag on the back seat.

"Change of plan," he said. "Let's have a drink and discuss it."

It was always something that made Benny smile, that phrase. Nan didn't know it.

"Why?"

"Because we can't go down there. Eve's going home."

"Damn!" She seemed very annoyed.

"Isn't it lucky we discovered?" He wanted to be congratulated on the amazing accident that made Aidan reveal this to him.

"Isn't it unlucky that she chose tonight of all nights to go down there?" Jack noticed that Nan never referred to Eve by name.

"Well, it is her house," he said with a little laugh. Nan didn't seem amused.

"I really wanted to be there tonight," she said. Even frowning she looked beautiful.

Then her face cleared. She suggested this lovely hotel in Wicklow. It was absolutely marvellous. Very quiet and people didn't disturb you.

It was exactly where they could go.

Jack knew the name. It was a place where his parents had dinner sometimes. It was much too expensive. He wouldn't be able to afford it and he told her so.

"Do you have a cheque book?"

"Yes, but not enough money in the bank."

"We'll get the money tomorrow. Or I will. Let's go there."

"And stay the night. Nan, we're not married. We can't." He looked alarmed.

"They don't ask for your wedding certificate." He looked at her.

She changed her voice slightly. "I've heard of people who've been there, and stayed the night. There was no problem."